There are moments when football at its purest takes on an art form to be admired by every neutral eye.

Even those diseased by bias have to stand and admire because the feeling is so overpowering.

Such is the way it is with Arsenal of 2003-4. Where once I watched the Manchester United of Best, Law and Charlton and allowed black and white eyes to see glorious colour, so it is again with an array of glorious Gunners.

What we witnessed beamed into our television sets was for an hour and a bit the most complete display of pure unadulterated football ever likely to be witnessed coming from a team surely destined to complete another league and cup double.

They are light years ahead of Newcastle United, who could only draw at Portsmouth where Arsenal won an FA Cup quarter-final 5-1, but then we shouldn't feel humiliated unless we actually believed that we were going to get closer to untouchables or absurdly overtake them for the championship.

Liverpool, mere mortals like us and our genuine competitors, couldn't beat Pompey over two cup ties, while Arsenal toyed with honest opponents.

We may have had our dreams but we aren't alone in needing binoculars to detect Arsenal in the distance. Even Manchester United, the team of the '90s, are struggling to hold on to their coat tails.

The Gunners are from another planet. It's football but not as we know it!

Thierry Henry may be their focal point - the man with real va, va voom - but all those who buzz around him are inspired performers. Each one is a centre-stage star, there's no chorus line.

Arsenal are as dependable as dawn and as smooth as silence. You know what's coming, it's just that you can't stop it.

They play with pace and panache, with imagination and vision, with confidence and movement. And they get their knees dirty unlike posers. The work-rate to win the ball back is enormous.

Of course, Pompey couldn't compete, except on the terraces where their fans were, well, Arsenal class.

There was his majesty King Henry. Patrick Vieira who was sublime, Ljungberg uncatchable, Edu exquisite. Jose Reyes didn't score yet was sensational, Kolo Toure did score when he has this season won total acceptance for preventing goals as a centre-half. And there wasn't even Robert Pires or Dennis Bergkamp at Fratton Park.

On a day when rugby union produced mighty shocks - Italy winning, England losing - the FA Cup produced none as Arsenal cruised through to join Manchester United.

Ruud van Nistelrooy, angry at being `rested' at Fulham a week ago, went neck and neck with Henry by scoring twice but he's a different sort of player who relies on service from others and his own instinctive movement. At the end of both he is ruthlessly efficient.

The Dutchman got his service from wide left and right, the winner manufactured by Cristiano Ronaldo who may look like a girl's blouse with his ridiculously-beaded hair and taped-up ankles making him resemble a show pony but who in reality is a prodigiously-gifted young footballer.

Different to David Beckham in playing style but what is it with Man U wide right players? Must their physical appearance be so outrageous when their manager is so staidly old hat?